Word: mansteins
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...Gangrene. To a skilled tactician like Manstein, today's defeat was less grave than its impact on tomorrow. Already, his fleeing men had far outpaced the German armies in the north, exposing their flank. With each day, too, the position of his 20-odd divisions caught in the Dnieper bend became more desperate. A lone railroad of supply and escape was in grave danger...
Defeat was a gangrenous infection which grew and spread, and with each hour became more dangerous. Not even Manstein, with all his genius for war, knew how to end the infection. All he could do now was to retreat with all speed, and hope that the pursuer would wear himself out in the steadily widening belt of devastated land...
...effect, the battle for the Ukraine was Manstein's last stand. For unless this battle was won-or even stalemated-it would soon be too late. Other armies would be gnawing at Europe's western and southern crusts. If, by then, the Red Army was at or near the gates of the Reich itself, or tearing at the Nazi structure in southeast Europe, Germany's end would be very near...
...Manstein's was a battle for Germany, her government, her army. It was also a battle for his caste-the Junkers-who were the army's heart, mind and will power. By a subterfuge, the caste escaped the ignominy of defeat in World War I ("We were stabbed in the back," the Junkers said). But now no subterfuge would help. For the Allied intent was clear: "The twin roots of all our evils-Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism-must be extirpated. Until this is achieved there are no sacrifices that we will not make, no length in violence...
When, on the wrinkled steppe before Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht met defeat, Hitler did not turn for help to one of his Nazi henchmen-Jodl, List, Guderian; he turned to Junker von Manstein. In December 1942, in the marshlands hugging the Caspian Sea, Manstein met in combat the Russian ex-private, Rodion Malinovsky. Manstein's first punch-with massed tanks-sent the Russian reeling back. But soon Malinovsky received help, counterattacked, made the marshes a cemetery for Manstein's men, tanks, hopes...